Last weekend I caught up with Ryan, he has been back in the SW for a few weeks now but we had until now not had the chance to catch up. We decided to head for Willyabrup for a variety of reasons: we wanted some trad, it has rooves that offer protection if the weather came in, it has longer routes, and because Ryan had been missing the old stomping ground during his last few years of globe-trotting/climbing:
He has been to quite a few continents and sampled the rock and lines they offered, so has now broadened his climbing styles and appreciations. It was interesting to hear that he feels while in the SW we don’t have the abundance of routes to pick from we do have consistently good quality rock. We were ken on trad so up he went on this neat direct line up the Dolphin Smiles wall:
The first climb (on second seemed a doddle) so I plumped for a grade harder but very well-rehearsed line on the Inner Space wall. The route after which this wall was named is great but it does have a bold and thin finish, oh and did I say that we had decided not to use chalk. So I had a bit of a yoyo experience on the top as the little holds all felt a bit slippy to me. When I topped out, fortunately, it started to slowly rain and got heavier and heavier:
The good thing about this place is the rock isn’t very porous, so it dries quickly but then when you get those sweaty fingertips it can quickly become discerning. I’ve used this image to show that the short sharp shower resulted in some wet rock (just above Ryan’s head) but we managed to work our way round it:
Well keeping the trad approach let’s see who can guess this climb, I’ll let interstate and international recipients off for not knowing. Personally I don’t rate the climb as much as others do and wanted to downgrade its classic 3 star rating. I relented on that quest after a bit of an ear bashing on the local climbers forum when I put the idea forward. As you will see only one climb later and all is dry and forgiven:
We were trying to keep the grade of routes on the level or rise, so we had kinda run out of trad lines so we ventured to a few mixed and one fully sport routes. This one has a fingery crux and I was impressed how the chalk-less Ryan managed to seemingly walk past the crux sequence. On second I could feel my fingers slipping away and am not sure how I quite managed to keep hold, but I did and was really tried afterwards. It was turning into a bigger than expected session:
After all my ranting in the past and to this day about trad calming I was the one who picked a fully bolted line. I’ve only put this image in as I love the wave in the background, they were big and impressive with wave after wave crashing in with the thunder like booming echoing off the walls. Made for a great atmosphere and luckily there didn’t seem to be a heap of spray coming up onto the walls. I mentioned that I was tiring on the last line so I panted my way up this one, back on Dolphin Smiles wall) with ever tiring muscles:
Ryan’s turn to choose and as I would be on second hell why not one more climb. So over to the majestic Steel Wall. It’s an awesome 35m face of great technical climbing that is on many a coffee table climbing book, it’s even on the front face of the new SW guide. I finally took an image of Ryan on lead that doesn’t look like he is on the same route in similar position, did you notice that about the last three images of him on lead:
Now yes I was tried but it just didn’t seem right to end on an odd number of climbs, does anyone else think like me? Well I have to admit to slipping up and dropping on my lead by one grade. But, I think I made up for it with the choice of climb which is extremely run out as this image hopefully shows. The run out sections are not too hard, but the holds are fingery and your head does play games when you get +6m above the gear and don’t forget today was a no chalk day:
Well Dazza you probably thought you wouldn’t get a mention, but here you are. We bumped into Dazza who happened to be down from Perth for a reunion with mates, some of whom he managed to convince to come out to Willyabrup so he could, well, show them the ropes. They were in fact the only other people with ropes down there, we bumped into lots of people walking or bouldering but no other climbers. Well it was there loss as it turned out to be a brilliant afternoon and we certainly worked hard and had fun:
Couldn’t resist one last image, as we were rolling back into our road a small creature ran across the road and I was able to get a sneaky picture of this cute Bandicoot in the headlights of the car. It was a grand way to end a good afternoon out, I thought I would be aching all over after what had been the biggest session I’ve had in a long time, but didn’t pull up too badly and the dreaded DOMS stayed away:
Sandbagged 